The present invention relates to an image information filing apparatus in which image information on a document, for example, is stored in a first storing medium, retrieval data assigned to each piece of the image information is stored into a second storing medium, and the image information stored in the first storing medium is retrieved and read out based on the retrieval data. The present invention particularly relates to an image information filing apparatus which can secure a one-to-one correspondence between a first storing medium and a second storing medium.
Recently, the following image information filing apparatus has been developed and made commercially available. The image information filing apparatus optically reads the image information of a document by a two-dimensional scanner, stores the image information on an optical disk, and stores the retrieval data assigned to each unit of the image information on a floppy disk. To retrieve the image information from the optical disk, the apparatus uses the retrieval data which indicates a location on the optical disk where the corresponding image information is stored. The image information thus read out is displayed on the screen of a CRT display unit or printed as hard copy by a recording unit.
In such an image information filing apparatus, a one-to-one correspondence between the optical disk and the floppy disk is typically achieved by using a recognition code which is stored in the recognition code areas on the optical and the floppy disks.
There are two methods for storing the recognition code on the optical and floppy disks. In the first method, after checking to see that no data is stored in the recognition code areas of both the optical disk and the floppy disk, the same recognition code is stored into these areas. In the other method, a specific recognition code is pre-stored in the recognition code area of the optical disk at the factory. When the apparatus is used, the recognition code is stored in the recognition code area of the floppy disk after it has been confirmed that no data is stored in this area.
In the former method, an operator may, through a simple slip of memory, store the same recognition code on different optical disks. In the latter method, an operator may store the same recognition code on different floppy disks. This means that there are two or more floppy disks which correspond to one optical disk. Thus, for the conventional filing apparatus, it is difficult to secure a one-to-one correspondence of an optical disk and a floppy disk.